I can remember lots of pontificating by talking heads about the elaborate super villain like cave lairs Osama Bin Laden and Al-Quada supposedly had, graphics such as below appeared in mainstream media.
http://s882.photobucket.com/user/ujisx/media/TheCartoonthatneverwas-DonaldRumsfe.jpg.html
Was anything remotely resembling this ever found?
Well, there was Tora Bora, the Black Cave.
The Americans dropped MOABs on it.
They found one under Bruce Wayne’s mansion.
The Wikipedia article on the battle of tora bora claims that no multi level fortress was ever found , only simple one chamber caves, rough bunkers.
“When Tora Bora was eventually captured by the U.S. and Afghan troops, no traces of the supposed ‘fortress’ were found despite painstaking searches in the surrounding areas. Tora Bora turned out to be a system of small natural caves housing at most, 200 fighters. While arms and ammunition stores were found, there were no traces of the advanced facilities claimed to exist.[29][28]”
Well, in Rumsfeldian mode aka Alternate Reality, also in that article:
Tora Bora was variously described by the western media to be an impregnable cave fortress housing 2000 men complete with a hospital, a hydroelectric power plant, offices, a hotel, arms and ammunition stores, roads large enough to drive a tank into, and elaborate tunnel and ventilation systems. Both the British and American press published elaborate plans of the base. When presented with such plans in an NBC interview on Meet the Press, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, said, “This is serious business, there’s not one of those, there are many of those”*
I remember Al-Qaeda Tours advertising the luxury hotel for wealthy westerners in the glossies of the time.
Activities optional.
A large cave complex was found in 2010 in Pakistan but it was still nothing like Rumsfeld’s fantasy villain lair.
No hydro power, no hospital, no hotel, no offices, no entrances big enough to drive tanks into and not in Tora Bora.
Thanks, I hadn’t heard of this before.
Reminds me of the joke of two old Israeli Jews at the coffee house reading their newspapers. One is reading the local Israeli paper, the other the local Palestinian one.
Israeli paper reader: Why are you reading that rag of our enemy? You should be reading *our *paper instead.
Palestinian paper reader: In *your *paper we are surrounded by powerful enemies, under siege, and in grave danger. In *my *paper we are all-powerful, all-knowing, and have the enemy under our thumb. I’m much happier reading this news than yours.
I’m sure AQ & OBL enjoyed reading about their Blofeldt-quality lairs while living behind a rock someplace.